Lasts (Prequel to Firsts)
by 1in5billion
Summary: After Henry's death, Teddy stumbles upon a few letters he wrote for her before he passed. Is this enough to start her healing process? Leads into seasons 9-13 from Teddy's point of view.
1. Chapter 1

_**Open When…You Need to Remember Me**_

 _Hey, you._

 _So you found my letters. Took you long enough. If I had to guess, you found them while you were stress-cleaning. I hope you haven't torn the house apart too much. I know how you get when you're a mess, and it's kind of adorable, but I also know that you pile everything from the bookshelf in the living room onto the couch while you're dusting, and believe me, you're going to want to sit down for this._

 _I don't know how long it's been since my death, now that you've found these. Well…obviously._

 _If, by some miracle, I survive the surgery, this is going to be really awkward because these letters were supposed to be coming to you from the beyond. Spooky, right? But I'm pretty certain, no matter how many times you held my hand and stroked my hair and told me that I would be okay, this is the end of the line. You're in surgery and Lexie Grey is helping me write these, because there's too much that I want to say to you, and I don't have enough time to say it. My surgery is in an hour. I've reached crunch time._

 _I don't know where to begin. 'Thank you' seems insignificant. 'I love you' is something we've started saying regularly, and I don't want to write something to you that feels like a habit. I want to tell you all the things I've never said._

 _If there's something beyond this life, and I believe there is, I'm going to be missing you from wherever I am. Not enough that I'm going to wish you were with me—you don't seem like a Romeo and Juliet kind of girl. But I can say with absolute certainty that your face is the only one I would ever want to see. All of those months ago, when I said I could look into your eyes for the rest of my life—I meant it then, I mean it now, and I'm so glad you realized you loved me so we could make eye contact for longer than the time it took for you to visit me before surgeries. It's a lot less…socially unacceptable…to stare into someone's eyes when that someone is your ACTUAL wife, not your health insurance wife._

 _But I bet you knew that._

 _What you don't know:_

 _Owen killed your goldfish. Not me. I took the heat for that one and said that I had forgotten to find a fish-sitter the weekend we went to Portland because I knew he felt bad. But I'm dying. All bets are off._

 _I know you were pregnant in June. You did a GREAT job hiding the test itself. But you left the box in plain sight. I was excited, but I also know that you miscarried pretty close to when you found out. It was right when I had my most recent tumor resection procedure. I was getting my CT when the pain started to hit you. You said it was nothing, but you were holding my hand tighter than you normally do, your breathing was labored, and you were squeezing your eyes shut like you do whenever you're about to cry. You came back by the time my surgery was done, but even though I was high on pain meds, I still noticed that you looked pale and shaky. I know that the only reason you didn't say anything was because of my procedure, but I wish you had. The whole time you were curled up next to me in my hospital bed, I would have held you while you cried and told you that it was okay, that we'd just keep practicing. But you held it together for me. You're too brave for your own good._

 _And finally. You know I love you. You THINK you know how much. But you have no idea. Whenever people use that "I love you more than all the stars in the sky" cliché, multiply that by about a hundred, and you have what I feel for you. When we met in that elevator, I was getting ready to propose to my girlfriend, and I still kept catching myself wishing I'd run into you again. Was I expecting you to say you'd marry me when my girlfriend said no? Not even a little. But it proved what I had suspected of you: that you have the biggest heart of anyone I have ever known, and anyone I ever would have met._

 _It has been the greatest time of my life, loving and being loved by you. Thank you for everything you've done and everything you are._

 _If you're missing me as badly as I think you are, there are a couple more of these letters. Open them as needed—read them whenever you want—and please, please try to feel like yourself again. I've seen you after losing patients. Loss makes you angry. Let your friends take care of you, so that you don't stay shut up in this house all the time. And try to sleep. Try pretending I'm with you if it helps. Don't do that a lot, because you'll fall down a rabbit hole if you do it all the time. But for the first few nights, I'm happy to be your imaginary husband._

 _I love you more than words, Teddy._

 _I'd write that and nothing else, if I had the time._

 _We'll see each other again someday. You have been the greatest adventure of my life. When you're ready, you deserve to have another._

 _All my love,_

 _Henry_

I dropped the letter, watching it fall silently and come to rest on the carpet. I wasn't crying. I wanted to be. But the tears wouldn't come. My heart was, even though I knew it was medically impossible, threatening to beat right out of my chest. And Henry was right—sitting down was best. It was 3 AM and I was cleaning, the only productive thing I'd been able to get out of the sleep deprivation I had been dealing with since I lost him. I had, as he predicted, pulled all of the books off of the shelf and left them scattered on the couch. So when his letters escaped from inside the cover of my copy of _Bridges of Madison County_ , I had no choice but to let my legs give out and sink to the floor.

I had brought the book with me to the hospital and left it with him when I was called into surgery, expecting to read it curled up in the chair next to his bed while I waited for him to wake up. The first night I was home after he died, I shoved it back onto the shelf, swearing to never touch it again unless I was cleaning.

Just as he promised, there were two more letters waiting for me. Both were folded—he had drawn a smiley face on one and wrote "read last" on the other. Tears finally stung my eyes while I stared at his slightly messy handwriting, but I didn't give them the satisfaction of falling. Not yet.

I opened the smiley face letter slowly, wincing slightly when I read the header: "when you need to laugh." Yeah. Right. Up until this month, I'd had a great laugh. It was _so_ loud most of the time, and Henry always said that he could base how funny his jokes were on how loud I was when I reacted to them. But now I couldn't remember what that laugh sounded like. In conversations with people around the hospital, it was forced, almost maniacal. Nothing was funny anymore.

 _ **When You Need to Laugh**_

 _Hi. Me again._

 _As you've probably noticed by now, my baseball card is in this letter. I told you there was a card out there somewhere with my face on it…it's been in my wallet this whole time. I was waiting for a day where I would need to make you laugh uncontrollably. It didn't even cross my mind that this could be what I was waiting for._

 _Look closely at it. The sun is in my eyes. I'm squinting. And honestly? I look high. You've described what I look like on morphine and it is, essentially, this picture. I thought you'd get a kick out of it. I also needed an excuse to picture you smiling. So you had better be smiling right now._

 _I've always loved that smile. I didn't see it enough—sometimes it was work, and I know sometimes it had to do with Iraq. But what I did see of it, I could have looked at for the rest of my life. And God, if you were LAUGHING? Even better. I could never get enough of the way your nose scrunches up when you laugh. The way you'd tilt your head back and then fall forward—you laughed with your entire body. (Always. I mean…go big or go home.) The way your eyes would get lighter. And you have the loudest laugh known to mankind. It's my favorite sound in the whole world._

 _I hope more than anything that someone will make you laugh like that again. I know more than anyone that the next few months are going to be hell for you. That's the cruel irony of this—losing me is going to break you and I know I would be able to help you fix yourself. But I can't be there. It'll be hard for you—I already know this is your 'Everest'—but please, please don't isolate yourself. You just can't. I hate to leave not knowing the next time you'll be hugged. My challenge for you is to hug the first friend you see tomorrow. Owen…Callie…Arizona…even Dr. Bailey. Hug someone, so I can be comforted right now by knowing that someone's got you. Someone. Anyone._

 _I love you._

 _Henry_

I put the letter down on the floor next to me and thought hard about the last few sentences. When _was_ the last time I had been hugged?

I hadn't spoken to Owen in five weeks, which was kind of a record for us since the year he broke off his engagement with Beth. But I didn't care. That was the funny thing about having a dead husband, wasn't it? You stopped caring after a while. You shut out your best friends. You went days without sleeping. You would wake up feeling good sometimes and start to straighten your hair, thinking _maybe_ you'd try to look nice for a change, and give up halfway through and sweep the tangled curls into a messy bun.

"You'd hate this, wouldn't you?" I whispered to Henry's picture. "You would hate this so much."

He would have taken one look at the shadows under my eyes, my half-straightened hair, and the now-spotless living room and gotten down on the floor with me. He would have pulled me onto his lap like a child and I _finally_ would have cried. I imagined him doing that now, and my throat tightened hard.

"You said you'd grow old with me," I said a little louder, throwing his picture across the room.

He would have just held me tighter. I would have fought the strength of his arms, tried to get up, tried to run away. He wouldn't have let me. He would have whispered some kind of comfort and stroked my hair and forced me to feel every last piece of this torment. That, more than a genuine desire to read anything more, was what convinced me to pick up the third letter.

 **When You Need to Move On**

 _I'm not going to lie; I was dreading getting to this one. The thought of you moving on, no matter how far in the future, makes me feel a little bit sick. But this letter is necessary._

 _My time is almost up, literally. The pre-op procedures have started and Lexie is writing this for me, as you can probably tell from the handwriting. I just talked to you on the phone, for what was probably the last time. Just to mess with you, I am THIS close to asking for extra morphine. What if I want to have one more of those awesome dreams? You're usually in them. Why do you think I like them so much?_

 _In all seriousness, it's comforting that your last words to me were, "I love you." I already knew that. But that's what I'd want to hear if I could only hear your voice one more time. Thank you. I love you, too._

 _When you get out of surgery, Cristina and Dr. Webber will more than likely have some bad news for you. I'm praying you're not alone because picturing them telling you about it is too much for me._

 _I know you well enough to know how this is going to go. You're going to obsess over this. You're going to get it into your head that it's your fault, that there was something else you could have done. But this is just the way things had to be. I have a chronic tumor condition. We were doomed from the get-go. The time I got to spend with you was better than anything I ever dreamed my life could be. I want that for you again, someday._

 _I mean that. I'm not just saying that because the morphine is starting to kick in. I really, genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, mean that._

 _When you're with me, your eyes light up. Your smile is bigger and brighter. You hold my hand in the halls like we're in high school._

 _That part of you can't die with me. You'll want it to. But this is my dying wish. Are you listening?_

 _My dying wish is for you to be this happy again later in your life. I was your "right now" love. I was never your one and only. You were mine. I want you to find yours someday. You deserve to be happy again. I don't want you to live the rest of your life without getting a puppy, without having a real wedding, without having kids…just because I'm not here to do it with you. I want all of those things for you._

 _Hug your friends. Heal. Smile._

 _I miss you already. You were the best years of my life. I wish we'd had more of them._

 _I love you._

 _I'll only make Lexie write that once, but know that I mean it infinitely._

 _See you someday._

 _Henry_

To say that I was crying would have been an understatement. My vision was blurred and the noises I was making weren't quite human. It sounded a little too much like someone's hands were wrapped around my throat. This was pure terror. This was a panic attack; the same kind I'd had because of Iraq.

I was alone.

Completely, horrifyingly alone.

I was going to go up to bed and the other side would be cold and empty. I was going to leave for work the next morning with no one to say goodbye to. I would come home to an eerily silent house. This would become my cycle if I didn't hurry up and break it. This rabbit hole I had gotten myself into would break me.

My legs still felt frozen to the carpet where I had been sitting, but I forced myself to stand up. I put the letters back in the cover of my book, where I was sure that I would pick them back up every night for God only knows how long. I picked Henry's baseball card up from where I had thrown it and took it upstairs with me. I set it down gently on the side of the sink first while I brushed my teeth, then set it on his pillow while I climbed into bed.

The sad reality was that I knew I still wouldn't sleep much, if at all. But for him, I wanted to try again for the first time in over a month.

"Just for you," I whispered to the picture as I turned my lamp off, "I'm going to try to sleep. I'm going to drink water tomorrow, not just coffee. Can't promise that I'll wear makeup, but you always said I didn't need it, so maybe that won't matter much. If I do my hair, I'll commit to doing all of it. This is harder than you thought it would be for me, and clearly you prepared for a lot. But I'm trying, okay?"

I settled back down onto my pillow, fighting back more tears as I realized that a day would come when I didn't need his picture anymore. I wouldn't need to talk to him. I would be okay someday.

But in my twisted, masochistic nature, I didn't want to be okay yet.

At this thought, I picked my phone up and scrolled through unread text messages until I found Callie's name.

 _Hey,_ I typed. _This is going to sound like a weird request._

 _Weird requests are my best skill set,_ she answered.

 _If that has anything to do with Arizona, I don't want to know._

 _Shut up,_ she said, adding a laughing face to her message. _What's going on?_

 _I need a hug._


	2. Chapter 2

I took time to heal. I took so much time to heal that I could physically feel it as I got better, like I was coming back into my own body. Untangling myself from the blankets and getting out of bed in the morning wasn't a chore anymore. I didn't have to stand in front of the mirror and talk myself into going to work. I had the patience to curl my hair again. I got out of the lab and went out with my friends for the first time in months, although, that admittedly didn't end well. I started ladies night with movies and wine, and before I knew it, I was waking up on Callie and Arizona's couch. There was a blanket on top of me, but the movie was over and they were nowhere to be found. I put the pillows back where they had come from, destroying any evidence that I had ever been there, and tried to make it back to my car before breaking down—I failed, and ended up across the hall, crying in Mark's arms while Julia played with Sofia, pretending not to notice I was there. I went home so embarrassed that I felt almost sick, and it was all I could do not to sleep with Henry's baseball card on the other pillow that night. But I couldn't let myself. I hadn't done that in weeks. I stared at the ceiling instead, wondering how I'd let myself get to this point. I had pushed all my friends away, pushed them so hard that it made no difference to them anymore whether I was around or not. I wasn't Teddy anymore. I was head of cardio at work, but I was The Widow everywhere else.

It was because of this, I realized, that I should have accepted the MEDCOM offer as soon as it came. I shouldn't have thought about it, there shouldn't have been a choice. Maybe I shouldn't have even told anyone. Maybe I should have just _gone_. If everyone had woken up one morning and there was a new cardio attending and I was nowhere to be found, would it affect them at all? I laughed at the thought of that. Of course it wouldn't. I scared people now. I never used to be an angry person, but the shadows that had been passing through my eyes were enough to make people avert their gaze, to look anywhere that I _wasn't_. What was stopping me from throwing everything into suitcases and getting on a plane and never coming back? I could start over. New job, new life. But I couldn't.

I had tried to tell myself a few years before that Owen Hunt would no longer be the reason behind my huge life decisions. He had been the reason that I had come running to Seattle in the first place instead of going back to New York. But that was love. What kind of love, I wasn't entirely sure, because we had both moved on and married other people. But love, nonetheless. Still, something was keeping me from leaving him. But it was a different kind of love. This kind of love was fueled by guilt. He had tried to be my friend, he had tried to take care of me. And I had done the only thing I was good at and shoved him away. I tried to explain. I tried to fix it. It was a close call—the damage had almost been done. I was forgiven. For a few weeks, we re-adjusted to working together. We caught each other up on our lives. But then I told him about MEDCOM. I was given one last hug. And I was fired.

It was for my own good. He was right. I couldn't stay in Seattle for only him when he had a marriage to put back together and I had a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity. But when I started packing that night, it hit me exactly how many miles I would be from the closest thing I'd had to a home in years. The apartment Henry and I had gotten together? I would never set foot inside it again. The rest of my friends were on their way to Boise. I would be gone before they ever got home. I had only seen Owen when I left the hospital—I wouldn't even get one last Callie hug. I was on my own.

I didn't sleep that night. Not that I was expecting to. My head was running out of control, and lack of sleep had _always_ set my emotions on edge. I couldn't take a deep breath without my chest tightening painfully, and after a few moments of wondering how far I was going to let this panic attack progress, I was crying. But not like I had cried when I left Owen. No, not even close. In between shuddering sobs, I made a noise that I had never known myself to make before, a strangled scream that I was sure sounded how it felt—like someone had closed their hands around my throat. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror next to my dresser and was astonished—I didn't know who I was looking at anymore. There was a crazed, almost manic look in my eyes that I hadn't seen since Iraq. The mascara I had put on that morning was now streaked across my cheeks, and my face had lost most of its color.

 _I used to get like this all the time,_ I thought desperately. _Owen could fix it. What the hell did he do to fix it?_

Hugs. That was always his go-to. I had always been affectionate, but these attacks were always the only exception. I never wanted to be touched, but he forced it. He'd wrap his arms around me, engulfing my entire body, and hold me tight. I'd fight him—I always fought to get away—but the pressure was the only thing that would ever make me relax.

For one wild moment, I thought of calling him, but thought better of it. He thought I was excited. He was happy for me. I couldn't ruin it. I ran down the list of numbers in my phone, stopping on Mark and Arizona, but they both went straight to voicemail. Alone. I was alone.

I curled up on the bed, trying my best to hug myself. It wasn't anywhere near the same thing, but given the circumstances, it was the best I could do. More than anything, I wanted Henry. And if I couldn't have him, it would have been a great time to get his letters back out. But I had stuck those in a suitcase. My arms were going to have to be good enough, and in a way, it was better than nothing.

The panic subsided after a while, like it always did. But the tears were out of my control, and they only stopped because I didn't have any left. I stayed where I was until my alarm went off, not sleeping, not even closing my eyes, just staring at the ceiling. This was it. This was real.

"Be GI Jane, you idiot," I whispered to myself. "No more Attachment Barbie."

And I made good on that promise. I finished packing, sent Callie, Arizona, Mark, and Owen texts that I would miss them, and that was it. I was gone.

My restless night caught up to me on the plane—I spent the entire twelve-hour flight drifting in and out of deep sleep, leaning against the window, something I was grateful for until we touched down and the side of my head crashed into it.

My body, adjusting to the most sleep I'd gotten all at once in _years_ , was completely disoriented as I walked through the airport, and through the entire cab ride to my apartment, but I woke up as I started unpacking. If this place was ever going to feel like home, I knew I would have to make it _look_ like home first. And it finally did, in the middle of the night, right when the full effects of jet lag were starting to hit me. But as tired as I was, I still picked up the phone to call Owen. It was the middle of the day in Seattle, he wouldn't mind.

But as soon as he picked up the phone, I knew something was wrong. His voice was hollow—there was no expression in his "hi" at all.

"Hunt?" I said gently, not wanting to push him if he didn't want to explain it to me.

But he did, and I had to sit down before my legs gave out as I took in the words he was saying. Plane crash. Mark Sloan. Dead. Lexie Grey. Dead. Those spun through my head like a top, and I had to fight the urge to get sick as every memory of my friendship with Mark flashed through my head. And Lexie…I hadn't gotten to work with her as often as I would have liked, but she was one of my favorites. And Arizona and Cristina. If I hadn't just gotten off of an airplane, I would have gotten right back on one to go back home. But I knew that if I showed up, everyone would say that I shouldn't have come.

I ended the call with Owen, feeling as empty and hopeless as he sounded, and texted Callie.

 _Whatever you need, I'm only a phone call away. I'm so sorry. I wish this wasn't happening to you. I love you. Give Sof a kiss for me. xx_

The rest of my grief, I decided, would happen in the morning. The initial shock was stubborn and refused to wear off, and I knew that if I didn't sleep soon, I never would. I got under the covers, plugged my phone in, and took its case off. Henry's baseball card smiled up at me from where I had put it for safekeeping, and I set it down on my nightstand, brushing away a few tears that had started to fall.

"Take care of Mark and Lexie up there, okay?"


End file.
